Indie RPGs - Roundup: Boot Hill Heroes, Rodina, FTL, Blood Rune
 

I have a number of indie RPGs in my inbox, so I thought I'd collect them into a roundup.
First off, Experimental Gamer let us know about their Kickstarter for Boot Hill Heroes, a Wild West retro RPG with 1-4 player coop. They are asking for a modest $5000 and seem to have a fair chunk of the game done, needing the money for music, sound and possibly more art:
Jonathon writes in with Rodina, an indie "space exploration RPG inspired by games like Freelancer, The Elder Scrolls series, Deus Ex and System Shock." The video on their site is pretty rudimentary but the planned scope is quite exciting. This one is self-funded because "I'm not comfortable taking money from people unless I can immediately give them something in return".

• Explore Space, Inside and Out
  In Rodina, you can explore the world both inside of a ship and outside of one. You will find yourself having dogfights in space, gun battles on a planet surface, defending your ship from boarding parties, and capturing ships belonging to your enemies.
• Huge Seamlesss Procedurally Generated World.
  Explore procedurally-generated planets with millions of square kilometers of surface area. Seamlessly travel from a planet's surface to the depths of space, with no loading screens, warp doors, or invisible walls. Investigate asteroids, moons, space stations, and stars.
• Open-Ended, Simulated Gameplay
  Rodina will boast a game world simulation which supports player creativity and rewarding feedback. Release toxic gas into the engine room. Fly a false flag in order to trick your opponents into thinking you are their ally. Hack into the ship's computer and delete the source code that fires the weapons, rendering them useless. In Rodina, experimentation and creativity are valued over following a game script written by a desginer.

FTL (Faster Than Light) was actually the first Kickstarter I contributed to - it's probably a stretch to post it at RPGWatch but jhwisner sent it in, so what the heck. This is a "Rougelike Spaceship Simulation" and their Kickstarter was hugely successful, raising $200k from a $10k goal:
Blood Rune is inspired by classics such as the SSI Gold…More information.

"Rougelike Spaceship Simulation" ?

Yes, it has a red hue. Can't you read? ;)

I cut and pasted from the original and didn't notice the misspelling.

Love the reference to the Bonanza title screen in the Boot Hill Promo video. :)

FTL: Looked at the video and dind't really get it - so gameplay is mostly you managing the crew in your spaceship and your spacesships functions?

Dudes, I hope you got permission to use the theme from my favorite Western, Sergio Leone's immortal, "Once Upon A Time In The West". If not, the copyright owner is going to be pissed.

And upgrading the ship and choosing how to deal with various encounters, combat, etc. - ie, do you risk fighting the powerful slaver ship that ambushed you or do sacrifice a crew member to get them to let you pass. If you actually begin to defeat the slaver ship do you accept their attempt to placate you with slaves of your own or do you continue firing. Do you trade with the seemingly friendly ship or turn pirate and attack them - perhaps teleporting over some of your crew to kill them and capture better rewards than scrap but at higher risk. You can purchase specific upgrades (like cloaking, additional weapons, etc.) or spend scrap incrementally improving specific existing systems and ship attributes. You can also spend it trade with other ships and sometimes satisfy pirates so you don't have to fight (might be the only way to survive if you just fled from a system where you were getting your butt kicked in the middle of an asteroid and your oxygen system is already failing for example.)

The other gameplay videos on their own website give a better idea of what you can do in the game. This pre-beta gameplay video is probably a better rundown of some of the gameplay than the one from the kickstarter page or on their homepage.

http://vimeo.com/38619551/

The trailer really doesn't present that there are actual decison/special events beyond just clicking on your crew

http://www.ftlgame.com/blog/wp-conte…11/ftl_ss3.png

As Dhurin said (and as I said when said when I submitted it) it's not really much of an RPG in the sense of having character interaction and player agency in the wider world, but sort of space-ship version of a random dungeon crawler, or roguelike. Since some of the older style games like LoG seemed to hit a chord on here, I thought people might find one that harkens back to old rogue-like dungeon-crawlers and even Zork-like text adventures to a degree might pique people's interest. The conceit you have to accept with this one is that your ship is the character (in the sense of stat/equipment progression) and your crew are more-or-less meat-based components.

That FTL gameplay video looked amazingly fun. Is the playable demo available to the hoi polloi?

Rodina looks very interesting to me - I'll be keeping an eye on that one.

They had a demo playable through the streaming OnLive service during their Kickstarter campaign but unfortunately that's over now. I don't think there is a playable demo out there at the moment.

I was able to play it some during that time and it's definitely an interesting game.

FTL Has a new gameplay video. They've implemented quests, different races, and more complex interactions (the video shows the pacifist special option to avoid conflict as a 3rd blue choice in one encounter) and the ability to recruit crew with special abilities.

http://vimeo.com/41472447/

Anyone else playing the FTL beta right now? Pretty damn addictive; also loving the addition of sector story elements and leveling up crew members.

Here's a working link to the Rodina website. Still very early in development, but I like the potential.

Boot Hill Heroes sounded cool, but I wasn't impressed by the gameplay video. I think I'll pass on that one.

Not sure what to think of FTL…